"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Do You Think Picking The Lesser Of Two Evils In November Is How We Should Chose A President?

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Maybe Hillary assumed no one would notice the kinds of hauls she was taking in from the Financial Sector for her presidential run. After all, the titans of Wall Street had largely underwritten her political career from the get go-- to the tune of $36,846,987. The only Members of Congress to whom they were more generous were McCain ($38,054,987) and, as she pointed out at the Sunday debate in South Carolina, Obama ($68,186,749). She will soon surpass McCain though probably not Obama. But it should have been clear to her campaign that someone-- surely one of the shady Rove SuperPACs if not a primary opponent-- would bring up that her presidential campaign was scooping up money from these unsavory industries:

These numbers are through October 16... and the campaign giving season is just moving into high gear now. Hillary still hasn't figured out how to talk to Democratic audiences about Wall Street's affinity for her. When she played the 911 thing card, it was one of her campaign's worst p.r. catastrophes. How many people recalled this bit of political cynicism from Family Guy that night?This time her excuse was just that Obama and Barney Frank took massive amounts of money from Wall Street and were still crusaders for reform. Barney, who was chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, accepted $4,451,123 from the Finance Sector. In his last election (2010), at the height of his House Financial Services power, Barney's 3 biggest sources of funds by industry were:

Other top sources were Misc Finance ($141,999), lobbyists ($105,673) and Commercial Banks ($90,200). Today, he's aggressively backing Wall Street's pick for president and doing what he can to undermine the reform candidate. I once asked him about the money gushing into his campaign from Wall Street and mentioned how bad it looked for the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee to be taking this kind of money. He dismissed my concerns and claimed-- like every politician has always done-- that he hasn't been influenced by the cash. That wasn't a credible answer and I was disappointed seeing someone I once liked and respected subtly tilt towards Wall Street forces he railed against in front of progressive audiences. I have no doubt Dodd-Frank and other legislation coming out of his committee would have been much stronger and more effective if Barney Frank-- not to mention the other committee members-- were not taking millions of dollars in legalized bribes from Wall Street.

To appeal to the [Wall Street-dominated Bush] White House, he has made numerous revisions, including dropping a plan to have the government serve as a clearinghouse for auctioning bundles of refinanced mortgages.

Yeah, and we know what that led to. Today, Barney Frank is speaking out for Hillary and for for Wall Street's number one pick for the U.S. Senate, reactionary New Dem and Schumercrat Patrick Murphy from Florida. This cycle, Wall Street has given more money to Murphy than to any non-incumbent running for the Senate ($787,750), and also more than to Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan, House Financial Services Committee chairman Jeb Hensarling, and embattled GOP Senate incumbents Ron Johnson (WI), John McCain (AZ), Mark Kirk (IL) and Richard Burr (NC). The revoltingly corrupt Patrick Murphy is Wall Street's #1 electoral priority for 2016. Last summer Barney was appointed to the board of directors of a New York bank. Although the Board chairman, Scott Shay, primarily gives to Republicans, he also contributed to a small handful of Wall Street-friendly Democrats like Chuck Schumer and... Barney Frank ($2,400 on May 11, 2010). Barney Frank is very smart and very witty and a very credible and erudite spokesperson on LGBT equality. He's taken far too much money from Wall Street to listen to anything he says on subjects pertaining to it.

Time Magazine online polling-- although they meant Sunday, not Thursday

Sunday night's debate appears to have been won by Bernie. The online polls, like the one above from Time, say so, as do the Google analytics stats, which showed, for example that "Bernie Sanders" was the search term most used in all 50 states. All 50... every single one. Exactly what Clinton and the wretched Wasserman Schultz were trying to prevent by hiding the debates away on weekends in the middle of NFL playoffs. It must have been painful for him but even villager Chris Cillizza declared Bernie the winner. "[T]hroughout the debate's first hour-- the hour when most people, especially on the East Coast and in the Midwest, were watching-- he was the prime mover in virtually every discussion from Wall Street reform to health care to climate change. He was on offense, accusing rival Hillary Clinton of half-measures and political caution at a moment when boldness is required... More than anything he said, though, it was the passion and disruption that Sanders oozed from every pore over the two hours that should push Democrats on the fence about the race into his camp. Sanders effectively positioned himself as the anti-status-quo candidate, a very good position to have in this electoral environment."Cillizza also noted that Hillary was the loser. "[S]he did nothing in the debate to slow the momentum that Sanders is building in Iowa and New Hampshire. Aside from guns, where Clinton scored a clean win against Sanders, she was unable to effectively cast him as a pie-in-the-sky idealist and herself as the only person who could truly fight for-- and win on-- Democratic priorities. Time and again, she was boxed into defending a status quo that the American public-- Democrats and Republicans alike-- is dissatisfied with... The Clinton-as-cautious-pragmatist vs. Sanders-as-idealist-fighter is not a good dynamic for the former secretary of state."Democratic Party insiders-- the Establishment (AKA- Hillary's crowd)-- thought Bernie failed to make any headway in the debate. I guess we'll find out in 2 weeks. But writing for the Post, James Hohmann surveyed the pundits and social media and came to the same conclusion Cillizza did: Bernie won the debate. The debate, after all, was all about him and "the overnight verdict from most in the pundit class is that Sanders prevailed, even if narrowly."

Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis tweeted that 27 of 30 undecided voters in a South Carolina focus group he convened picked Sanders as the winner.Republican focus group maestro Frank Luntz: “Bernie needed an overwhelming victory in tonight’s #DemDebate. At best, he got a narrow one. That won’t be enough to win the Dem nomination.”Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin gave Sanders a B+, Clinton a B and Martin O’Malley a C+: “Sanders’ improvement manifested itself all night, winning him more good moments overall than both Clinton and O’Malley.”NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald: “Sanders shined …. at times overpowering Clinton in a format she typically controls.”CNN senior producer Teddy Davis: “Sanders notched debate win. 1) Blurring distinction on guns. 2) Putting out a health plan. 3) Being high minded on Bill Clinton.”The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf: “I’m going to call tonight’s debate a win for Sanders. I thought he bested Clinton. … But even if they performed equally well, he stands to benefit, as the candidate who still has less name recognition, from squaring off in front of folks who’ve never seen him before and equaling his opponent.”The Atlantic’s Molly Ball: “It wasn’t great for Hillary, but I didn’t hear any major gaffes, and Sanders didn’t expand his appeal beyond the base that is already responding to his angry fulminating.”The Nation, which endorsed Sanders last week, says “Sanders Set the Tone”: “Clinton remains a formidable candidate, but at times it was possible to forget she was even on stage.”Vox’s Dylan Matthews thinks Clinton’s attacks on Sanders “as insufficiently pro-Obama … generally didn’t sound that persuasive.”NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Who’s the frontrunner? If you only watched the debate and didn’t read polls, you might assume Sanders.”

Hillary's dishonest attacks against Bernie as a gun-lover-- mindless Hillarybots online have been instructed to refer to him as "NRABernie"-- are easily countered when her own opportunistic flip-flops on gun issues come to the fore. As PolitiFact pointed out recently, "Clinton continued to push for more gun control while serving as the senator from New York, but in her 2008 presidential run, she seemed to back off a bit."

Positioning herself to the right of then-Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton spoke throughout the campaign about the importance of guns to American culture while still defending Bill Clinton’s record on gun control."You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl," she said at a town hall in 2008.At a 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Clinton gave an affirmative "yes" that she was backing off her 2000 call for a national licensing and registration plan because it would "preempt" cities and states’ initiatives. But she also called for reinstating the assault weapons ban and better background checks for potential gun purchasers.Clinton responded to another question about her position on a gun registry at a debate in Philadelphia."What might work in New York City is certainly not going to work in Montana," she said, explaining her reason to abandon the proposal. "So, for the federal government to be having any kind of, you know, blanket rules that they're going to try to impose, I think doesn't make sense.""I respect the Second Amendment. I respect the rights of lawful gun owners to own guns, to use their guns," she went on to say later in the debate. "But I also believe that most lawful gun owners whom I have spoken with for many years across our country also want to be sure that we keep those guns out of the wrong hands."

She demagogued against Obama on guns when she ran against him in 2008, although that time she was saying Obama was too anti-gun and she sent out the mailer just above to Democratic voters to try to drive home the point. She's always been a politician who will say whatever it takes to whomever is listening to her, to score a point. It's why she is so distrusted and why so many people have such an intense visceral dislike for her. If she becomes president, it will only be because she is judged the lesser of two evils.